Archive for December, 2011

Of course, there are many factors that go into becoming (or not becoming) a success. Luck, timing, etc.

Now, we’ve already discussed in previous emails how you “create your own luck” by basically working your butt off.

And of course, there is just “being in the right place at the right time.”

A lot of life is random. Winning the lottery. Getting a disease or getting hit by a drunk driver. Working at a dotcom that turns into the next Facebook or Google or what have you. Good things can happen to bad people and bad things definitely happen to good people.

But at least 50%, if not more of life is created by the decisions you make.

I see GREAT artists making POOR decisions all the time.

They sign deals with shady people or companies.

They don’t work hard enough.

They don’t make their music better.

They don’t tour or play out enough.

They hire terrible publicists or lawyers or managers or promoters or music licensing people who don’t know what they are doing (or who don’t have the connections to do what really NEEDS to get done).

Or they don’t hire anyone at all, which is even worse.

They throw their music into music libraries with hundreds of thousands of songs in them….and sit around waiting, and waiting…thinking that will do something…thinking that something will happen from being passive, when 99% of the time, it won’t.

Great music won’t rise to the top unless you have a cheerleader for it.

After all, isn’t that a LOT of the reason artists want a major label deal?

Uneducated artists don’t invest their own money in their own careers. Yes, even Snow Patrol, Imogen Heap, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, all those artists invested their own money (or had families that did) for years and years until they broke through. Rich parents aren’t the key (although they can obviously help a LOT). Many acts work their butts off at minimum wage jobs to get enough money to record with the “right” producer. Or to get enough money to tour. I’ve seen it. I’ve managed those acts, in fact. I’ve also managed the “lazy” ones that thought a record deal would fall in their lap because they wrote a few good tunes. Guess what? It didn’t…

I see artists all the time that hire the wrong manager and wrong team members time and time again. And wonder why it “hasn’t happened” for them yet.

I can’t MAKE you make good decisions (in life and/or with your music career).

I can’t MAKE you hire the right manager or right promoter…or even the right band members.

I can’t MAKE you go on the road.

I can’t MAKE you work on your songwriting skills and VOCALS to make them better.

But I do know, if you don’t learn to make better decisions, you’re going to be stuck neutral for a long, long time.